


Blowing Smoke

by Viridian5



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Smoke Break, outsider pov, working stiffs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-03-06
Updated: 1999-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:36:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working stiffs are the same everywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blowing Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers, but it takes place in "Two Fathers," not that you need to see that episode for this.
> 
> Written at work as an apology for the nick-fixx e-mail list (as is the nixxer custom) for sounding off half-cocked on the Empty Bodies thread. A good-natured but much-needed thwap from ListNotTheMomma Alicia knocked this loose.

The hard, brittle winter morning hit my face like a shock, with the bitter wind smelling as sharp as it felt. It was one of those treacherous days that looked like bright, warm sunlight when you looked out the window but felt like death once you walked out the door. It insinuated itself up my sleeves and into my hood, burrowed into the bones and sinews of my thin hands. It was a damned shame I couldn't smoke while wearing gloves. I just couldn't.

But I had to smoke, and I had to get out. Spending 30 minutes on the phone trying to get data from a resentful and terminally clueless director of admission at a SUNY school had rasped my nerves raw. I'd maintained my professional, bland phone voice the whole time, but I'd really wanted nothing more than to get her neck in my hands and squeeze. I dealt with at least one of those truly hopeless calls a day. At this rate I wouldn't make my bosses' insane quota this week. Again. But none of us were.

I had to get away from the stale office air and futility, had to forget I was building an ulcer from a temporary job that only paid me $13 an hour. In the absence of escaping for good, I could go outside for my break.

He already stood in the doorway, alone, staring moodily out into the street. His body seemed to hum with barely pent-up energy. The shirt and tailored pants said hip, urban professional, but the battered leather coat suggested streetpunk. My chameleon stranger usually went completely one way or the other, but I liked the combination of roles on him. Hell, he was decorative all the way around.

I didn't know his name, and he didn't know mine, even though I saw him on some of my smoking breaks. He didn't chat with the others, refusing to abide by the unofficial social rules we exiles went by. But he talked to me at times when it was just the two of us.

Sometimes he bummed a coffin nail from me. I doubted that he didn't smoke when I wasn't around--I'm sure he had his own--but I could hardly grudge a few cigarettes to a person who added a bit of poetry to my life. A bit of intriguing mystery. He already smelled of smoke even before he got outside. We worked in a public building. I could only guess that he worked for people rich enough to circumvent New York's anti-smoking laws. People who didn't believe underlings had the right to light up along with them.

He looked at me with the usual killer smile, and I tried to hand him a cigarette. He didn't take it the way I expected. Instead he wrapped his lips around it and pulled it from my fingers, which had gone nerveless. He did enjoy his games. I cupped my hands around the lighter's fragile flame to protect it from the wind. I let myself imagine I briefly saw an answering flare of it in his thickly lashed green eyes.

He only played with me this much when he was especially ticked off about his job. "Let me guess: your bosses are idiots who want the results they're looking for right now but don't understand or want to hear about the problems," I said.

He slowly blew out a plume of smoke that the wind swiftly ripped to shreds. "You could say that. And they're being threatened by a hostile takeover but are hiding their heads in the sand."

I lit my own and let the blessed nicotine settle me. At least I'd dropped from two packs a day to a half. "Things are tough all over," I replied in my best hard-boiled voice.

He smiled darkly. "A change is gonna come..."

"Yeah?"

"You may not see me again. I think I'll be getting a promotion soon. I only had to stab a few backs to capture it."

My smile matched his. "It's not like they'd earned your loyalty." More power to him.

A withered man with skin like neglected leather stalked out. I could get a nicotine hit just from standing next to him. He gave me a brief look before he focused on my stranger. "Time to go," he said then turned his back and started to walk to a limo at the curb.

My stranger flashed a look at his back that should have dissolved him. As he stubbed out the cigarette I'd given him, his lips moved, but no sound came out. It looked like he'd swallowed the word "soon."

"Thanks for the cig," he said before he followed the man who had to be one of his bosses.

"A change is going to come," he'd said. I wished him the best with his ambitions, but I doubted it. Something always went wrong.

Nothing ever changed.

### End


End file.
